Streamlabs vs Streamelements has become a more popular subject over recent years. They are two of the best streaming services for anyone looking to stream on Twitch, Youtube, or Facebook.
Since 2014, Streamlabs has been the most popular and premier streaming service available and has provided streamers of all caliber with an awesome set of tools.
During this time, it has become the norm to use a streaming service, and it is recommended that all new streamers use one.
Streamlabs continues to dominate today, with almost all of the biggest streamers using it.
In fact, it’s only competition has been StreamElements, which was founded only in 2016. At a glance, it is hard to separate the two.
However, this article will take a deeper dive to truly find the differences, and ultimately decide which is the best.
Streamlabs vs StreamElements
Which is more popular? StreamLabs Vs StreamElements
Streamlabs is far more popular than StreamElements. In fact, it is around nine times as popular; there are around 450,000 users of Streamlabs, compared to only 50,000 StreamElements users.
While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does mean two things. Firstly, that finding help from other users and troubleshooting more generally will be easier.
Secondly, Streamlabs likely have a far bigger budget and will improve more in the future. So, while it is another minor advantage, it is one that should definitely be considered.
Alerts
One aspect in which it is genuinely hard to separate the two is the alerts they give you. Both services give you access to an absolutely enormous library of sounds, templates, and GIFs for you to use as alerts on your stream.
They both offer an easy and intuitive way to set them up, too, and both are entirely free of charge.
In addition to this, both give the option of a media share feature.
This gives you the opportunity to let your viewers play music and videos on your stream, along with an alert.
This shows how both Streamlabs and StreamElements give you fantastic customizability surrounding alerts.
Donations
There is slightly more of a difference between the two services in regards to donations. The main dissimilarity comes with payment options.
Streamlabs lets you have your donations sent to PayPal, credit and debit cards, unitpay, skrill, or coinbase.
StreamElements, on the other hand, only allow PayPal and credit/debit cards. While this is relatively minor, it may be important to people who are wedded to a particular payment method.
Other than this, donations work similarly between the two services. Most importantly, neither take a cut from the money you receive.
As well as this, they both let users send their own messages along with donations if you like. You can also allow them to send media along with donations if you dare.
Bots
On first impressions, there is nothing to choose between Streamlabs and StreamElements in regard to bots.
Both operate very similarly, giving you access to a massive variety of bots to interact with your chat in various ways, such as games, polls, and announcements.
Both also have bots to help your moderators keep on top of things; this includes bots to police bad language, abuse, and more nuanced things like spoiling plotlines too.
One advantage that Streamlabs’ bots have over the opponents’, however, is the ability to reward loyalty.
For example, with Streamlabs, you can set up a bot to give small rewards to watchers who stay for a long time, or tune into a few of your streams in a row.
This may sound small, but it can be crucial to building a loyal user base quickly and is, therefore, quite a major oversight for StreamElements.
Appstore
Streamlabs has its own app store, which offers all manner of entertaining activities which your chat can join in with.
Some of these are performed by bots in-chat, and others are played externally. A lot of them are really fun, and are a great way to add something unique to your stream.
However, they do tend to cost quite a lot, so this is only a major advantage if you’re willing to pay more for your streaming service.
StreamElements has nothing that resembles Streamlabs’ store.
This does mean that the potential of customizability is lower with StreamElements.
However, for the user who isn’t intending to spend any money, this doesn’t result in a difference.
Merch is a big part of any streamer’s success. I would suggest a company like Design by Humans as they are built for gamers and costs you nothing. They even have some very good built-in features for your twitch panels.
STREAMLABS VS STREAMELEMENTS FOR CONSOLE STREAMERS
One small yet vital difference between the two is to do with how the chatbots work. Streamlabs’ bots can only work via a program downloaded onto your PC.
This program has to be running whenever you are streaming for the bots to function. This reduces lag greatly, and won’t take up any of your bandwidth, which is great.
However, the unfortunate negative of this is that, if you are a console-only streamer with no access to a PC, then you will not be able to use Streamlabs’ bots. This is a clear downside.
On the contrary, StreamElements host their bots via a server, and you don’t need to download a program to set them up.
This means that it’ll take up more bandwidth, and possibly create lag. However, more importantly, this means that you don’t need to have a PC running to have your chatbots active.
Therefore, StreamElements is far more friendly for console-based streamers.
Conclusion
Overall, it has to be said that Streamlabs deserves to have a bigger user base than StreamElements. They also seem to run better with your streaming PC.
They are identical in quite a few ways, but the discussed differences mostly paint Streamlabs as the superior streaming service.
This is apparent mainly in its app store, but also the larger selection of payment methods, loyalty rewards through bots, and also Streamlabs’ massive user base.
The only downside to Streamlabs is its console streamer unfriendly bot system. This is, however, the only tangible reason to not use it.
Comment below which one you use in the StreamLabs Vs StreamElement Debate
